


may the boy grow wings

by halfwheeze



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: F/M, Heed the Warning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 05:25:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16469600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfwheeze/pseuds/halfwheeze
Summary: bill denbrough writes poetry about a boy who loves birds. he doesn't remember why.





	may the boy grow wings

**Author's Note:**

> i saw something like the summary as a post on tumblr by kira-sputnik, so complete credit of the idea to them!

_And on the bird's wing he soars_   
_I watch him from the ground_   
_He says hello to little larks and hunting hawks_   
_A sunshine boy with hummingbirds at his heels_   
_This is where he has always wanted to be_

Bill reads over his own work and sighs. It's the third time he's written about the boy with the birds this week, all in different styles, all different lengths and different tempos. Something in him knows that this is meant to be longer, loving and sad, but Bill Denbrough does not write love poetry, and especially not about boys. He writes horror epics and vague epithets with just one taste of sin, but never love poems. His stomach aches with what he cannot remember, and he does with this poem what he did with the others. The top of the trash pile is looking more and more like a poetry novel every day.

A week later, he has written five more: an allegory of Icarus, a shadowed profile of the songbird and the falcon, a whispered goodbye the woodpecker sings, the birth of the crow, the sparrow overhead. All five mean something bad for the bird boy, and Bill cannot help his anxiety, even if the bird boy is nothing but a fictional figment of his writer's imagination. Audra rubs at his shoulders and tells him that the poetry is good, but Bill doesn't know. She's started sweeping the bird boy poetry into one pile rather than the trash, and Bill lets her. She knows better than him in most instances, and he'll trust her in this as well.

Mike Hanlon. Mike Hanlon calls and Bill is sick, Bill is sick with remembering and sick with sadness and sick with this awful numbness that chases him all the way back across the sea, all the way into Derry. He had forgotten Derry, Maine, where he had lost his brother and his innocence, and where he had seen his beautiful bird boy for the last time. Mike Hanlon calls and the bird boy is gone forever, just a feather drifting to the ground in the wind. Bill Denbrough has missed him his whole life through without remembering his name, and he can only hope he'll forget it again after this is done.

Eddie Kaspbrak dies and takes a piece of Richie Tozier with him, and Bill thinks that maybe Richie is the closest Bill will ever get to knowing someone who feels exactly as he does. Richie Tozier holds the love of his life in his hands while the light drains out of his eyes, and pieces of Bill war inside of him. A grand piece of him wishes that that could have been him, that he could have held his bird boy to his chest when the pain became too much, that his bird boy would have wanted him there to say goodbye. Another piece of him is too glad he missed his bird boy's exit to want anything of Richie Tozier's pain.

He does not forget Stan Uris this time. He takes Stan Uris home in a hole in his chest, hollow and hallowed in its lifelong sadness, the one that he did not have a name for before. Stan Uris is laced between his fingers with a love that he wishes he could bury with his bird boy, his sweet boy. He comes home and he tells Audra all about Stan Uris, and she understands. She always understands. She's Audra.

Together, they compile the book. It's the throwaway poetry and the words that Bill Denbrough cannot said aloud, and everything he should have told Stan when they were fifteen and sixteen before the two of them grew apart. He should remember Stan Uris the man, upright and wonderful, loyal husband and good man. He should remember Stan Uris the accountant, fair and talented, good businessman and quick mind. Instead, he remembers Stan Uris the boy, full of light and wonder, who loved to hold hands because it made him feel safe, and who showed Bill birds even when he had no idea what the other was talking about. He remembers Stan Uris the boy who loved and loved and loved and who gave and gave and gave.

Audra helps him mourn. Audra helps him compile the book. Audra helps him. She's more than he's ever deserved but she always had been, and Bill wonders how she would have liked Stan Uris. They have the same delicacy to them, bright and careful, the same kind of linen whiteness to their souls that Bill Denbrough had a lifelong fear of tarnishing. She would have liked him, Bill thinks. The two of them would love to show each other little pieces of nature, Stan with his birds and Audra with her gardens, and they would understand each other so much more than Bill would ever be able to understand them.

With the book of poetry in hand, he wishes that it could be a reality. The book is reality now, bound in sky blue with a dove in flight on the cover, wings nearly all the way open as it goes into a drop in altitude, seeking out something Bill Denbrough could not even guess to know. Stan Uris might know, would at least have thoughts on the matter, but Bill cannot ask those of him. The closest that Bill Denbrough can come is placing this copy on the headstone he had waited so long to see, waited so long to face. He still doesn't want to look at it now, afraid to break down in front of this boy he loved so much, even if he isn't here to see it. Bill would break down for Stan Uris if he would say a single word, but that's not an option now. It was never an option.

_may the boy grow wings. poetry written by bill denbrough and cataloged by audra phillips denbrough._

_dedicated to my bird boy, who flew into the light long before i could meet him again._

**Author's Note:**

> prompts @halfwheeze on tumblr


End file.
